Strong is the upcoming US release from Arrested Development. The album has already been a success internationally. Their hit “The World Is Changing” reached #9 in Japan.

Read below to find out the stories behind some of the amazing new tracks on Strong. We are honored and excited to be featuring Arrested Development on My Audio Bio. Special thanks to Speech for providing these great stories.

Purchase 3 tracks from the new album and more from AD at: http://arresteddevelopmentmusic.com

Check out stories behind their classics on the AD profile page!

Let Your Voice Be Heard (Exclusive Track above in player!)
The 90’s were golden era of Hip-Hop. You heard many points of view from Hammer, to 2Live Crew, to Public Enemy. You didn’t have to agree with everyone, but you definitely heard everyone. I don’t hear this in music right now. When I turn on popular radio in any of our cities, it’s like I hear the same person talking.  Where are the rest of the voices?

Greener
We have been environmentally conscious from the beginning of our career. On our first album we released “Children Play With Earth”, about getting kids off of video games and outside. On our Second album “United Minds” was about recycling. The Green movement has now come into play, people are respecting the use of resources more, but the rap community hasn’t really addressed this, seemed to be a missing topic.

The Green movement has been championed by white’s but not as openly adopted by the black community. This song is to get people thinking about the earth, acknowledge that African American’s are environmentally conscious, and encourage people to join the movement.

Bloody
In the 90’s Biggie, Tupac, Wutang, and many more started taking precedence. This song represents the downside of what was happening in 90’s hip-hop; the lack of intelligent thought. When you look back to the 90’s at Rwanda, at Republic of Congo, it was reminiscent of Hitler. Millions of people were massacred. What were we taking about in the Hip Hop scene? Bling, getting on private jets, thongs, money…

Chuck D said that Hip Hop is the CNN of Black people. Well, we totally let CNN go off the air. Nothing was being said to about what was happening. Instead we were promoting Crystal and clothing lines. We became voiceless to the real issues and became the voice of corporations. “Bloody” is a history lesson, let’s learn from this so history won’t repeat itself.

The World is Changing:
(From guitarist and song Co-Writer JJBoogie)
Eight years ago I wrote a song for a woman I was deeply in love with. I asked her to be my girl and sang the song for her nervously! Nanyana said yes…..and a year later we were married. Fast forward to eight years later in the studio with Arrested Development writing material for the upcoming release, I started playing a guitar riff. That chord progression was what I originally wrote for Nanyana years earlier. I never recorded the song….I actually forgot most the lyrics. Speech heard it and said “What’s that? I like it!” I told him I would have to get permission to use it from my wife. Later that night I asked her if I could use it to write too and she said “It better make us a million dollars!” and laughed.

So I taught the progression to Za, Omar and Eric and they immediately started grooving with it. Speech started humming a melody then came up with the concept of the world changing before our eyes. The rest is history! The song World Is Changing went to #9 on the Japan Pop Charts from the newly released album entitled STRONG!

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